


Two of Hearts

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Female Doctor Experiments [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Complete Story, Experiment, Gen, References to Transphobia, and one new Who monster, features one classic Who monster, wrote this before Jodie Whittaker was cast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: This is the third of a few female Doctor fics that I wrote before Jodie Whittaker was cast, just to see what it felt like.  It picks up shortly after the end of "Maze of Fears," but that's not immediately evident because it starts with a new character and can stand alone.Stella Jeong is working at a radio station in a city where things are—a little bit off.  And then she finds, in her pack of playing cards, a phone number.  And a note that says, "The Doctor—call me when it goes odd."
Series: Female Doctor Experiments [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1243505
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

“Hey, Stella. Why are you always fooling around with that pack of cards?”

Stella Jeong finished a fake shuffle and looked up. Edith Raines was the leading actress in the radio drama Explorers, which meant that she played all the female roles. She was also reasonably friendly to Stella, unlike two of the three male actors. “I used to do card tricks,” Stella said. “Before I did sound effects.” It required a similar mindset: to achieve improbable effects, do something fairly simple and mundane.

“Seriously? Like, magic tricks?”

“Like magic tricks, yeah.” She had been aiming for professional status, before—events had interfered, and her instructor had dropped her like a hot rock.

Edith sat down beside Stella and looked at her expectantly. “Show me something.”

“Well—okay.” Stella riffled through her deck, noted that the nine of clubs was on the bottom, and then fake-shuffled again. “Do you have a pen?”

Edith fished a pen out of her clutch purse. “I think it even works.”

“Sounds good to me.” Stella went through the rigamarole of having Edith stop her riffle at a certain place in the deck—it didn’t matter, the card she was getting was the nine of clubs, she just wouldn’t know it. Got Edith to sign the back of a card she thought was the queen of spades, got her to sign the front of the nine of clubs, and then faked “tapping” the signature off one and onto the other.

The result was a card that was signed on both sides. It went off flawlessly.

“Let me see that,” Edith said, grabbing for the deck.

“You’re not going to figure it out by looking at the cards. They’re normal.”

“They’re obviously not normal, because I know I signed the queen of spades—hey, this one already has a signature on it.”

“What?”

“And a number,” Edith said. “A long one.” She handed over the card.

The card did indeed have a number on it. It had a tiny crease on one side, as if someone had contemplated ripping it and then changed their mind at the last second. And a signature, and a message: _call me when it goes odd._

Stella was hit by a sudden memory. Bright, harsh sunlight, from before she’d come to the city. She’d been in Las Vegas, she’d been busking, with cards and coins and a few miscellaneous objects, and she’d been having a horrible day. She’d attracted a persistent heckler, a man no older than her own twenty-two, who kept loudly trying to explain her tricks to anyone who stopped to participate. Never mind that he was invariably _wrong;_ he was driving away the audience. No-one wanted to risk being amazed when there was someone to mock their amazement.

“I’ll have a go,” a woman said suddenly.

Stella hadn’t noticed her until a second ago, which was startling, because she might have been designed to stand out, even in Vegas. She was a tall white woman decked out in the most appalling tourist outfit Stella could imagine, a Hawaiian shirt badly mismatched with clashing Hawaiian-patterned shorts, and oversized sunglasses, and a big straw hat that had, for some reason, a St. Patrick’s Day ribbon around it. It looked, Stella thought at the time, almost like someone _disguising_ themselves as a tourist, and drastically overplaying the part.

Then she wondered why she’d thought that.

Maybe it was the accent. Something about the accent seemed off, like someone from another country putting on a generic American accent and ending up with a muddle.

Which wasn’t any of Stella’s business. She smiled and slid a pen toward the woman, and started in on the familiar signature trick.

Which went all right up until the woman was about to put pen to card. Then, suddenly, without any tricks on Stella’s part, the two cards that were the centerpiece of the trick zipped away from the pen and snapped back onto the top of the pack.

Stella froze for a moment. That wasn’t—well, obviously it was possible, but it wasn’t a trick she was familiar with, and—

Two people nearby were applauding.

“What are you trying to pull?” the woman said.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am. Maybe we should start from the top.” It was all Stella could think of to say, and she was lucky to get that out of her mouth. She was being messed with by a true expert, and she didn’t know why. Was this harassment? Was it because she’d been kicked out of the Ring? The Ring wasn’t the only magician’s club around, but it had been Stella’s main source of training, and she had not left willingly, or quietly—

She was false-shuffling the cards as she thought. Same trick, same presentation, same two cards—

Same two cards leaping back into the pack in Stella’s hand.

This time, she thought she’d heard a sort of peeping noise. The woman looked like she was palming something with her left hand, but Stella couldn’t see what it was.

This time, there was a bit more applause.

“I think,” Stella said, doggedly staying in character, “maybe the cards don’t want to be written on today. Let’s try a different trick—“

The different trick didn’t turn out differently. More applause as the cards jumped out of the woman’s hand.

“You’ve got this deck rigged up with rubber bands,” the woman declared. “Let me see that.” She grabbed it, and Stella let her.

Only to have the cards go _everywhere,_ flying up into the sky, fluttering to the table in front of Stella, skidding across the table—it was a storm of playing cards, like something out of _Alice in Wonderland,_ and Stella actually yelped and shielded her face before she realized that none of the cards were coming at her—none of them had hit anybody, in fact.

What they were doing, was stacking themselves back up. Into a deck.

This time, the applause was thunderous. As the woman brushed herself off, the people on the street dropped bill after bill into Stella’s upturned top hat.

Stella barely had the presence of mind to manage a sitting-down bow. How that trick worked—she knew how to get a card inside a lemon, she knew how to do a great many things that seemed impossible, and she still had no idea _how that trick worked—_

“My card,” the woman said, and pulled one last playing card out of her pocket. She handed it to Stella.

It was the two of hearts, and it was signed. The card read, _27-182-818-284-5905. The Doctor — call me when it goes odd._

Stella, reading the signature, thought she heard the woman say, “Explain _that,”_ in a low voice to the cowed and sheepish heckler. But when she looked up, the woman was nowhere to be seen.

That incident had provided Stella with much-needed money for several days. Before she had come to the city, she had lived hand-to-mouth. Before she had come to the city . . .

Now, Stella took the signed card back from Edith. “That’s a leftover,” she said, “from an earlier trick.” She didn’t shuffle the two of hearts back into the deck; she put it in her purse instead. “Mostly, I give people the cards they’ve written on. You want to keep that one?”

Edith did. “How about you do it to Richard?” she suggested. “I want to see his face.”

Stella didn’t. Richard despised her, probably because Stella was trans, and Edith was the only person oblivious to his dislike. But it paid to be nice to your coworkers, so she went through the rigamarole again, earned a _“hmph,”_ from Richard, and then it was time to go on-air, and the sound effects required her full attention.

That was when it started. Maybe. Maybe it had started a lot earlier and she just hadn’t noticed.

§

Stella walked home in the rain most of the way, her own umbrella blending in to hundreds of anonymous ones. All the umbrellas in the city were black, it seemed. And everyone wore hats; Stella’s faded pink cloche hat was a positively bold choice among all the black and dark grey ones. It was almost enough to make you want to be back in Vegas, with the glaring sun and the tourist clothes. Even that woman’s mismatched Hawaiian prints.

It was startling how _bright_ that memory was, compared with the memories Stella had made lately. Stella didn’t think about her past, much; there was too much there that she didn’t like. But at some point, she had started living in a fog.

There was mist rising from the gratings, as if small dragons were down there huffing their displeasure at the rain. And that was an image Stella had taken from a book, long ago. Heavens, what had she read lately?

She stopped at a news stand, on impulse, and looked at an issue of _Weird Tales._ But she was almost certain it was an issue she already had—the cover was no help, it didn’t have a date on it—and she couldn’t flip through it under the watchful eye of the news stand girl, so she passed on by.

Vegas. She had crashed on someone’s couch in Winchester, which was basically part of Las Vegas, and gone onto the strip to busk for cash. The black and white stage magician outfit had been murder in the hot sun. Stella had been living more or less as a transient, fleeing family, failed relationships, and a failed career—she had intended to go into stage magic full-time, but nobody wanted someone who didn’t look like a magician, and magicians looked like standard-issue white men. Add to that the fact that she’d been ejected from her magic club when she started to transition, and she wasn’t even fully trained. Twenty-two, with no idea what twenty-three would look like, or even if she’d last long enough . . .

Then she’d moved to the city, and gotten a job.

Just like that.

_Call me when it goes odd,_ the card said. But what was odd?

The fact that Stella wasn’t quite sure how she had gotten her job—was that odd? Or the fact that she couldn’t remember why she’d moved to the city?

Odd things happened in the city all the time. There was a crime wave going on. Especially depraved criminals, like the Bloodwing or Circe the Singer—they were leaving their mark on the city, one disaster at a time. Everyone swore they would move out to the country. Nobody Stella knew had the resources to go.

Stella stopped absently to shake the rain out of her umbrella and fold it. The moon was bright overhead, looking twice as big as it ever did in . . . actually, she couldn’t remember when she’d last noticed the moon. Easy to misremember, then. That was the first thing you learned, doing stage magic: your perception was unreliable, your memory even moreso.

She walked past the diner. There was a man at the table with dark glasses and a white cane, apparently reading a newspaper. That was odd, wasn’t it? Everything was odd, and that was normal. At least for the city.

She passed into the next city block and put her umbrella back up again. Pouring rain. She wished it would make up its mind.

And then, with a tickle of unease at the back of her mind, she stopped, stepping automatically out of the way of the other passers-by. She was almost to her apartment building. What was wrong? What had changed?

The theater across the street had changed its marque, that was one change. Apparently it had stopped showing that Fred Astaire thing and had started showing _Dracula._ Which only made sense; Stella had seen _Dracula_ premiering at another theater somewhere near the diner.

Actually, hadn’t that been several months ago?

The theater was old; maybe that was the explanation. The N in CINEMA was flickering in and out in the rain. The theater—

_Not right._

The theater was a gothic, crenellated sort of building, and it shouldn’t have been. It should have looked like an art deco palace, with a peak in front that Stella thought vaguely resembled the prow of a spaceship. It shouldn’t have decorations like that, with actual gargoyles included among the stone filigree—

Was she on the wrong block?

No. Because the big HOTEL sign that shone in her window all night was right where it should be, only—only the O was shorting out on it—and Stella’s apartment building wasn’t right, either. It should have been art deco as well. Sleek, not dark and gothic.

But it was definitely her apartment building.

But it wasn’t.

Something was wrong, and Stella’s brain was too fuzzy to work it out.

So she went back a block—back to art deco, back out of the rain—and bought a notebook and a pen. She needed a pen anyway, if she was going to keep doing the signed-card trick.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some ableist views about mental illness in this particular chapter, although it goes by so fast you might miss it. This is because Stella is extremely frightened of any sort of problem with her mind.

An hour later, sitting down in a soda shop and writing down everything she thought was odd, Stella was feeling close to panic. Either she was going crazy, or there was something out of joint about the _world._

_Changed city block._ That was the first item on the list. But there were others, ones that were harder to explain away by her somehow misremembering or getting lost. Such as, _what year is it?_

The last year Stella remembered was twenty eighteen. She had a feeling she’d been writing it on her checks. But—it didn’t _look_ like twenty eighteen. Even down to the cloche hat she was wearing. She was dressed like it was nineteen thirty.

If it was nineteen thirty, would the radio station even have hired an Asian woman? An Asian trans woman? Undoubtedly not. But then when was it?

Walking back to the news stand—which Stella did, telling herself all the way that she was acting crazy—didn’t yield any more insight. The newspapers didn’t have dates.

That went down in the notebook, too. _Newspapers have no dates._

She had tried asking the newspaper girl what year it was, and gotten nothing but a dirty look. Buttonholing a passer-by got her, “I don’t know, nineteen eighty something.”

_Nineteen eighty something?_ In the notebook.

_How did I get my job,_ that was another thing on the list. Stella didn’t remember learning sound effects. She also didn’t remember interviewing. She just—moved to the city, and there she was, with a job and a tiny apartment and a pharmacy down the street that sold her hormones without any hassle at all. (Easy hormones, in the notebook? Why not? Everything else went in it.)

The ice cream float she had bought, Stella decided, was much too sickly sweet.

Possibility one: she was crazy.

It was certainly _plausible,_ Stella thought grimly. She was twenty-two—she was still twenty-two, wasn’t she?—and didn’t schizophrenia set in at about that age, if you were going to get it? She had certainly spent enough of her adolescence wondering if she was cracking up, before the internet told her that _would happily sacrifice arms and legs to be a girl_ was, perhaps, a sign of actually being one—

_No internet._ In the notebook.

So, insanity. That was possibility one.

Possibility two: someone was deliberately messing with her. A trick of some sort. Hypnosis might do it, although Stella had always had a panicky reaction to the feeling of going under; it would require a very skilled practitioner, someone who could get to her without her knowledge or consent. That—was not a pleasant thought. But there had to be some sort of payoff, some point to the trick, and she couldn’t see one so far.

The woman with the two of hearts—she had some sort of stage magic training, clearly. Maybe she was also a mentalist. Stella discovered her card, and then started noticing things being weird? Maybe this was all her. Maybe this was magician hazing. Maybe if she called the number, she’d get, _you’ll never be one of us,_ and a hang up.

Assuming that number was even a phone number. It was a lot too long for one, wasn’t it? Numbers in the city were five digits—

_How many digits in phone numbers?_ On the list.

Someone deliberately messing with her, Stella thought, was far more likely than possibility three: there was something genuinely wrong with the city, with the world, with everything around her.

So. Operate under possibility two, because possibility three was too extreme and possibility one was basically the same as dying. Someone was meddling with Stella’s mind, probably the woman with the two of hearts, probably to teach her a lesson, probably to say, _you think you belong in magic, but you’re wrong, you freak._ In light of that—was there any sense in calling the number on the card?

It depended on whether the woman wanted to humble Stella, humiliate her, or hurt her. If she just meant to humble Stella, all she had to do was admit that she’d been thoroughly tricked. If it was humiliation, she would have to beg. If the woman meant to hurt her—calling the number would make everything worse.

The problem was, Stella couldn’t think of anything else to try.

She had paid, and was getting up, when the change hit. The lights dimmed from brilliant white to grimy yellow, and the soda shop shrank. Not by much, just by a few feet, but enough to make it seem close and oppressive. The dazzling clean counters became cracked formica. The plastic leather on the stools was suddenly torn.

A woman burst into the soda shop, clothing torn and eyes wild. She lunged toward the counter, saying, “They changed, they all changed, you have to hide!” Stella could hear screaming through the open door, and looked out.

The night club across the street—which looked ominous and gothic, all of a sudden, rather than sleek and upper crust—there were people pouring out of it. People, and other things. They were human-sized, and they were wearing clothes, but some looked part pig, some looked part dog, some were reptilian—

A woman stepped out of the night club. She was wearing a pure white evening dress that shimmered like scales. She was beautiful, dark hair and overly pale skin, like Snow White. It was only looking down where her feet should be that you saw the false element—tentacles, groping out from under the hem of her dress. She raised her hands like someone accepting applause, and said, in a sort of chant, _“Pigs, and wolves, and snakes, and hounds—men are this and more. Go, my children, run them down—“_

Stella slammed the door. You didn’t live in the city without hearing about Circe the Singer, one of the more powerful supercriminals. People heard her songs, and they weren’t the same afterwards. Nobody had said that it literally turned them into things, but—

Supercriminals. Going in the notebook, just as soon as Stella had a chance to write in again, because right now she was far too busy leaning across the counter and saying, _“Back door now,”_ to the bewildered woman wiping it down. “Come on,” she added. “We all have to get out of here.”

She wasn’t sure why the other two followed her, but they did—out the back door of the soda shop, down the alley, and into the next block over, which still looked sleek and art deco and bronze. “Call the police,” Stella ordered them. “Use that hotel phone, there.” Which left Stella with the pay phone in the nearby subway station.

People couldn’t transform into animals. It was impossible.

Logically, then, supercriminals were impossible. Had she just dragged two bewildered people out of the shop and ordered them to call the police over nothing? Possibly. But that meant that part of Stella’s understanding of the city was completely distorted. Anything she remembered, anything she thought she knew, could be suspect.

It was getting worse. It was getting worse, and she had no choice. She had to call the number, she had to see what the woman with the two of hearts wanted from her. And if it was horrible, or humiliating, Stella had a ghastly feeling that she’d do it anyway, because the alternative was to go on like this, without knowing if real mayhem was being committed. The woman had won. Stella was frightened, and lost, and more than willing to give up magic for life, if it got her out of this.

She thought of how grateful she had felt when the woman’s trick earned her extra cash, and felt a little bit sick.

The nearest pay phone was down in the subway. Stella noted that the place looked normal—bronze arches, clean complex tile patterns. Nobody seemed to have noticed what was happening a block over. Possibly because nothing really was happening . . .

Few people were in the subway right now. It was late; Stella had spent more than an hour on her notebook. At least there was no competition for the pay phone. The man at the newspaper kiosk eyed her suspiciously as she walked up and put in the coins, but he let her be.

Stella dialed the number.

There was a long pause, long enough to make Stella think nothing was going to happen. And then the phone rang.

And rang. And rang.

Stella was contemplating the indignity of being mind-wrecked and frightened by a person who wasn’t even home when she called up to beg for it to stop. And then the ringing stopped, and a woman with an English accent said, _“Who is this?”_

“Stella Jeong,” Stella said. But, of course, that might not mean anything to the woman; plenty of people hated Stella without knowing her name. “I was busking in Vegas. You came up—“

_“Which Vegas?”_

“Las . . . Vegas . . . the normal one,” Stella said. “I was doing card tricks. You came up and did one that was better than mine. Then you gave me a card with this number written on it. And when I found it again, in my regular pack, everything started to go all wrong.” Stella took a deep breath. “Listen—I’m sorry.” She had swallowed enough unfairness in her life. She could stomach this. “I’m an amateur, and I shouldn’t have been moving in on the professionals.” She could give up magic, she could give it up forever—cut off another piece of herself because a sadistic stranger had found her an easy mark. Why not? Unfairness was the shape of Stella’s life. “I’ll give up magic for life, if you just remove—whatever this is—“

_“I haven’t done anything to you,”_ the woman said.

Stella closed her eyes. “I’ll do anything,” she said. “Please.”

_“I haven’t done anything to you, and I have no idea who you are. I’ve never done card tricks in Las Vegas.”_

Wrong number. Wrong goddamn number.

Stella put her head against the side of the phone kiosk and fought the urge to cry.

There was a low, bubbling growl. Stella dropped the phone, as well as her notebook, and spun.

One of the wolf-things. It had human eyes. It was advancing on her, slavering. “It isn’t real,” Stella whispered to herself. “It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real, _wake up!“_ The thing was between her and the exit, between her and anywhere to run, and it had claws, and huge teeth. “You’re under hypnosis,” Stella told herself, “none of this is real, it isn’t—“ She could smell the thing. Hot and canine.

And then someone said, _“Hai!”_ and the thing’s eyes rolled up. It dropped like a log.

The two of hearts woman was standing right behind it. She had abandoned the tourist garb, and was dressed as a magician, complete with tailcoat and black trousers. Her cravat pin was some sort of moonstone or pale opal, worth more than Stella could have made in a month of busking. Her hair was red; she didn’t have a hat.

The woman reached past Stella, who edged over, and carefully hung up the phone. “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” she said.

It was the same voice that had been on the phone. Right down to the accent. You could do that, with recordings or a good voice actor, but why, why . . . “I remember,” Stella said. “You had a trick, with flying cards—it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. The best!” In case _one of the best_ came across as an insult. “The best. Then you gave me the card.”

“Let me see it.”

Stella passed the two of hearts over, feeling for some reason as if she were relinquishing a lifeline.

The woman looked at it briefly. “Definitely my card. Also my handwriting.” She passed it back. “You said you were Stella Jeong?”

Stella nodded nervously. The woman seemed polite enough, but there was something underneath the politeness, a coiled energy that was barely held at bay.

“I’m the Doctor. When were you in Las Vegas, Stella?”

“Er, May,” Stella said, “around May, from about the fourth to the very beginning of June. I saw you sometime around the fifteenth.”

“What year?”

“Two thousand and eighteen. You have to remember, that’s when you must have primed me!”

“Don’t insult me. I don’t go around making frightened young women see monsters. There are monsters enough.” The Doctor knelt by the wolf-thing she had knocked over—only it wasn’t a wolf-thing anymore, it was a middle-aged man. She checked his pulse. “Not, apparently, including our friend. The transformation must have been linked to his conscious mind. Interesting.”

“You’re trying to tell me that this is real,” Stella said.

The Doctor stood up. “Do you know where you are, Stella Jeong?”

“In Forty-Fourth Street Station.”

“In what city?”

“In the—“ Stella stopped.

Cities had names. How could she have forgotten that cities had names?

“In what state?” the Doctor added softly.

“Stop it,” Stella begged, “please.”

“I’m not doing it. I’m diagnosing it. You don’t know where you are in space and time, but you know you’re in Forty-Fourth Street Station. Someone implanted you with basic information, everything you need to know about life in this nameless city, and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t include a packet of things you’re not supposed to think about.”

“Like the newspapers having no dates,” Stella said, and then stopped herself. The Doctor was playing with her. She had to be playing with her. The alternative—

The alternative was real wolf-things.

“Like the newspapers,” the Doctor agreed, “having no dates. You’ve started to collect discrepancies, then? Good! Very good. That should save time.”

The Doctor wasn’t acting like someone who wanted to humiliate Stella. Stella had gotten good at sensing contempt when she first went on hormones and started presenting as a woman. She didn’t feel it from the Doctor.

Was there really a hypnotic trick that would work on Stella for so long while she was conscious enough to wonder if she was being hypnotized?

_Something_ had messed with her mind. Something had made her forget what state the city was in, or what it was called, or how she had gotten here. But—it might not be the Doctor.

The Doctor acted like the wolf-things were real.

Play like it was real. Play like it was real, because if it was, then Stella needed to _run_ when the next wolf-thing came along. Try not to think about what it might mean for it to be real. “I have a notebook,” Stella said, bending down and retrieving it from where she’d dropped it. “I was just starting out—“

The ceiling turned dark. It didn’t lose its arches, but they became ornamented, and dark stone rather than tile. The tile underneath their feet turned dark green.

“Oh,” the Doctor breathed, “that’s _lovely.”_ She sounded sincere, not sarcastic, as if architecture shifting shape was something delightful and not bizarre beyond measure. She grabbed Stella’s hand. “Come on! Let’s see what’s happening up top!”

Stella came along with her, at the running pace she set. There wasn’t much else she could do.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured that Kishallon was wearing a shimmer field in this, but it doesn't come up in the story because Stella has no idea what one is.

Up top, there were bats flying out of a theater. Huge ones. People were ducking and screaming. As Stella watched, one of the bats landed on someone and engulfed him with its wings. His scream abruptly cut off. The thing unfolded its wings again, and there was no trace of him.

“Come on!” the Doctor yelled.

“We can’t run _towards_ it—“ Stella’s heart was a lump in her throat. Just the thought of wings around her, going _gone_ like that—

“My friend’s in that cinema!”

“What?”

The Doctor was already moving, ducking and weaving around the chaos, and Stella followed. “I told her to go take in a movie while I found out if you were a trap! She’s a student of primitive media, she’s always wanted to see one—“

The bat-things all vanished. Simultaneously.

The buildings warped back to their original form. Sleek, with lots of bronze, well-lit. The CINEMA sign, which had been slumping and deforming into red neon, sprung back into well-lit glory, a band of bright white lights running around it. A quick glance over Stella’s shoulder showed that the subway entrance was back too.

“And,” the Doctor said triumphantly, “she did something. Come on!”

The Doctor seemed to say that a lot.

They rushed into the cinema. Inside, it was still chaos, but human chaos—people panicked, people who had been injured in the rush, and some people, thank goodness, starting to see to the injured. The person behind the popcorn stand was on the phone, and seemed to be trying to force emergency services to arrive faster by shouting at them.

A woman came out of a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, looking dazed. She wasn’t dressed like a woman from the city—she was wearing trousers and some sort of wrapped shirt that Stella hadn’t seen before. She was completely bald, and Stella spent a second trying to guess her ethnicity—Arabic, maybe? Her profile reminded Stella of Egyptian queens. She was one of the few not-black women that Stella had ever seen dare the bald look, let alone make it look as good as she did.

The Doctor made straight for her. “What happened?”

The woman’s stunned look increased. “I think I just ruined a volume of priceless ancient media. The things were coming out of the screen, so I ran to the booth with the movie light and disconnected it from the power source in the wall, but it kept going anyway, so I just pulled things until it stopped projecting. I think I destroyed it.”

“Good girl,” the Doctor said, despite being only about thirty herself. “Kishallon, this is Stella Jeong. Stella Jeong, Kishallon.”

Kishallon—where was that name from?—made a sort of nervous half-bow. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Stella said, “listen, this is important. Was there a supercriminal anywhere around? Someone who seemed to be directing all this? Because—“

As if on cue, a floating woman in tattered clothes appeared several feet above eye level. The popcorn man dropped the phone and bolted, and so did anyone else who was fit to move. “The Tatterdemalion,” Stella breathed. And she was glaring straight at Kishallon.

Stella grabbed Kishallon’s hand. “Run!”

The Tatterdemalion extended one hand as if it was on strings, pointing direly at Kishallon. _“Kishallon,”_ she said.

Kishallon crumpled to the floor.

Stella bent down and grabbed Kishallon’s shoulders, knowing that she couldn’t pull Kishallon out of the way of whatever the Tatterdemalion was going to do—and the supercriminal was gliding forward and down, hands outstretched like claws. _“Mortal thing, your day is ended,”_ the Tatterdemalion said. _“Bones will crack, and flesh—“_

The Doctor interrupted her, voice strong, dark, and furious. _“Carrionite.”_

The Tatterdemalion froze with her mouth still open, and seemed to evaporate.

The Doctor bent immediately over Kishallon and brushed her face with her fingers. Kishallon blinked awake. “What happened?” Kishallon said.

“I’d like to know the same thing,” Stella said, as steadily as she could. That had been a show of power, that word. For an instant, the Doctor had seemed like something ancient, otherworldly, and mad as hell. It might be just showmanship, but Stella was intimidated. “How did you get rid of the Tatterdemalion, just by saying—“

“Carrionite?”

Stella nodded.

“It’s what she is. The word has power over her.”

“Words don’t work like that,” Stella said. “There’s no such thing as real magic.”

“Would you prefer I say that thoughts and words manipulate the quantum informational substrate of reality and can cause resonances on a macroscopic scale? I can do that. It’s wildly inaccurate due to deficiencies in the English language, but I can do that.” The Doctor pulled Kishallon to her feet. “Now. You’re in a city without a name where Carrionites are a known menace, but something else struck you as odd—odd enough to call me. What was it?”

“The changes,” Stella said. “You saw it—the whole block was changing from art deco to gothic.”

“Apparently in response to the Carrionite attack.”

“It seems that way.” Had the area near Stella’s apartment building been attacked while she was at work?

“I don’t think the Carrionites built this place,” the Doctor said. “It isn’t their style. That leaves whom? I need a better look at the city.” She strode toward the door of the theater. Stella and Kishallon followed her, Kishallon still seeming a little unsteady.

They opened the door almost exactly when the police pulled up to the curb. The cars, like all the ones in the city, were big and black, with running boards, but these had POLICE DEPARTMENT stenciled on the side in bronze lettering. As Stella watched, three cars stopped, opened their doors simultaneously, and police officers lunged out. They looked too similar to each other, somehow, all square-jawed and white and young.

“Come on,” Stella said quietly and urgently to the Doctor and Kishallon. “Let’s get out of their way.”

“You’re afraid of them,” the Doctor said.

“Let’s just _go.”_

They walked quickly for half a block. “Sorry,” Stella said finally. “It’s just—everyone knows you don’t get in the way of the police.”

“I can’t tell if that’s an America problem or a city problem,” the Doctor observed. “The police officers—did you notice something about them?”

“They moved like a clone family,” Kishallon said. “But they weren’t.”

“More than that. More basic than that. With most people, you have a sense of their presence, an awareness of their weight on the world. But those police officers weighed as much as air. It was as if there was nothing inside them. I haven’t sensed that in . . .” The Doctor trailed off. “Blocks. You kept saying ‘blocks’ earlier—the whole block changed. I _need_ a better look at the city. Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Kishallon said.

“Back to the TARDIS.”

§

Stella followed the two of them downtown towards Forty-Third Street, and then into an alleyway. “Where,” she said finally, “are we going, exactly?”

“Right there,” the Doctor said, and pointed.

There was a little blue booth sitting in the middle of the alley, somewhat cat-a-corner. Stella should have noticed it the moment she came into the alley.

The Doctor went to the door and unlocked it. “Come on, you two.” Kishallon went in.

“We’re all supposed to squeeze into that?” Stella said. How would that help the Doctor see the city better? Was it a map kiosk? Except it said POLICE . . .

The Doctor flashed a slightly unsettling grin. “It’ll make more sense on the inside. Or not.” She slipped into the booth.

Stella shrugged, and followed.

Then she backed out and stumbled into the alley. She could run—she should run—just run—

Run where?

The Doctor came out again. She didn’t approach Stella; she just stood there looking at her.

_“Who the hell are you?”_ Stella said. It was difficult not to make it a scream.

“I’m the Doctor.”

“Yeah, and I figured that was a stage name, but it’s not. Is it?” Stella paced frantically. “It could still be some kind of trick. It could all be some kind of trick. Assume you can manipulate everything I’m seeing, because obviously you _can,_ but where’s the payoff? Make me think something supernatural is going on, okay—but that won’t hurt me, not really. Talk me into doing something criminal to stop the apparitions? That—would probably kill me, eventually. Yeah, that’d teach me my lesson good and hard, but it’s so much trouble to go to on account of _nobody._ So why?”

“Why is that less frightening than it all being real?” the Doctor said quietly.

“It just makes more sense.”

“No,” the Doctor said, “it doesn’t. Why would I want to hurt you? Why would anyone want to hurt you _that badly?_ If nothing else, it’s a waste of resources. You have to assume that people hate you, almost sight unseen—“ The Doctor broke off. “You have reason to assume that,” she said flatly. “Some human thing.”

_Some human thing._ What that implied, about who—what—the _Doctor_ might be— Stella managed a very small nod.

“I see.” It was a sigh. “Stella—go home. You don’t have to be involved in this. You don’t have to think about it if you don’t want to. Kishallon and I will take care of the monsters.”

“I just want to know what’s real,” Stella said. The sentence came out alarmingly small and lost.

“Everything.”

“And you’re going to figure out why it’s like this? Why there are no dates on the newspapers and all that?”

“I am.”

“Then I want to come with you.” The Doctor raised her eyebrows. “I want it to _make sense,”_ Stella said.

“I can’t guarantee that. But you can come if you think it will help.”

Stella made herself walk toward the booth. Her hands were shaking. She was shaking. It took her a moment to put her hand on the door, another deep breath to open it. And then she was inside, and there it was. Bigger on the inside.

Much bigger. She was in a room that seemed to be a glass hemisphere, and outside it was blue sky, with trailing mare’s tail clouds. The sky fell away beneath the room, and there were fluffier clouds far below. There were stairs going down, maybe into the other half of the glass ball. In the center of the room was a mushroom-shaped console of some kind, with a glass cylinder in the center. There was infinity in here, and a booth outside.

There was a coat rack. Why was there a coat rack?

The Doctor came in behind Stella and moved around her. “Right,” the Doctor said. “We need a better view of this city, and that, I’m afraid, means actual flying. Find a handhold and grab on.”

“It _moves?”_ Stella said, a little bit choked.

“Anywhere and everywhere, and it also travels in time.” The Doctor twisted a knob. The room lurched.

“Are you all right?” Kishallon said quietly, as Stella hastily found a seat.

“I’m—coping. I hope. I hope I’m coping.”

“I didn’t think about how it must be,” Kishallon admitted, “or I would have warned you. You’re so ancient you don’t even have fairy tales about this.”

Stella was about to say, _who are you calling ancient, I’m twenty-two,_ and then figured out that wasn’t what Kishallon meant. “You said ancient media. At the theater.” Kishallon winced, then grabbed for a handhold as the room lurched the other way. “You’re from the future. The distant future.”

“Very distant future,” Kishallon said. “This is the dawn of the universe as far as I’m concerned.”

“So—is this magic? Or very, very advanced technology.”

“Is there a difference?” the Doctor asked, over her shoulder.

_“Yes,”_ Stella said. “It—okay. Space gets weird around a black hole, doesn’t it? So maybe you could have space that was sort of stretched out, bigger, on the inside of a black hole, and then if the black hole gave up gravity and started having doors, it would make me sound like an absolute idiot, which is what I’m doing.”

The Doctor gave her a surprised, somewhat approving look. “That,” she said, “was wrong in so many inspired ways that it almost came back around to right.” She pulled one last lever, and the lurching stopped. “The TARDIS is very, very advanced technology. Kishallon and I are aliens.”

“Different kinds of alien,” Kishallon said hastily.

“Can you cope with that?” the Doctor asked.

Stella hesitated, then nodded. It was slightly easier to cope with than true magic would have been. Slightly. What they said, about sufficiently advanced technology . . .

“All right,” the Doctor said. “Time to get a better view.” She strode to the doors and flung them open.

Stella followed, hesitantly.

They were far above the city. She could see the grid of lights laid out below, with the Clocktower stabbing the sky in the city’s center. She could see—

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. Onto empty air.

Which held her. She knelt down. “Look at that,” she murmured, pointing. And then, looking back up at Stella, “Come on out. The TARDIS won’t let you fall.”

Stella swallowed.

The Doctor stood up and held out her hand. “Trust me.”

Stella hesitated, and then reached out slowly and took the Doctor’s hand. It was cool, and dry, and not nearly big or strong enough to hold her up if she plunged down through the sky.

She felt for a surface with one foot. Found one, a soft one, slightly yielding. Shifted her weight slowly, as if she were trying to cross ice.

The surface held.

Other foot, out of the TARDIS. She was walking on nothing, now, standing on complete emptiness, and to her surprise, she found a giggle rising in her throat. It came out a bit too high, a bit hysterical. _Believe it or not, I’m walking on air._

She was. She was walking on air. She was doing the impossible. Real magic, or close enough—but it was holding her up, not hurting her.

The next giggle was less hysterical, more giddy. “I’m walking on air,” Stella said. “I’m really—walking on air.”

The Doctor smiled slightly, then knelt down again. “Take a look.”

The city grid was laid out beneath them.

The city grid—looked like a cross-word gone crazy, or a tile floor made of dark and light tiles. Some squares were lit up brilliantly in orange. Others were covered by clouds, clouds that matched the outline of the blocks exactly. Rain clouds, Stella thought. The delineation between them was knife-sharp.

Ordinary cities didn’t look like that. Ordinary weather didn’t look like that.

“Reminds me of a game board,” the Doctor said. “Look how the dark squares are advancing, gaining territory—“ A square flickered from light to dark. The clouds appeared in a rush, and filled the square almost instantly. “You have to fight for each square, since they’re all occupied. The point of the game is to flip them.” She pointed to the Clocktower. _“That_ is the light side stronghold. It’s the sticky uppy bit. Always pay attention to a good sticky uppy bit . . . I think—asymmetric game, with an aggressor and a defender. The aggressor’s win condition is to take the tower. The defender’s win condition—is more difficult to read from just the board. It could be eradicating the aggressor from the board entirely, it could be defending until a time limit or a turn limit—and without knowing those conditions, I can’t say whether the Carrionites are winning or losing.”

They looked as if they were doing pretty well to Stella. There were dark squares in all parts of the city, including the city center—not _everywhere,_ but ubiquitous enough. “Who are they playing against?” Stella said.

“Good question. Against whatever force represents itself as light, order to the Carrionite chaos. Perhaps the police; they didn’t strike me as quite human. Here’s the real question, though.” The Doctor stood up. “Is the Law on your side? Look up.”

Stella looked up.

Then she said, faintly, “It didn’t look like that from the ground . . .” The moon loomed over them as if it would fall on them.

“That’s because we’re no more than a quarter mile from it. That’s an artificial moon, on an artificial sky. Your answer to the question of what state the nameless city is in: it isn’t.”

“But it doesn’t _fit._ You can’t build something like this . . . is it, is it underground somewhere? Or is it like _The Truman Show,_ where the whole world is in on it and the people inside just _think_ it’s twenty eighteen, or whatever date it was in that movie?”

She got another mildly approving look. “Good, but no. We’re in the Coalsack.”

“The what?”

“The Coalsack Nebula, six hundred light years from Earth.”

“Oh,” Stella said, in a small voice. And then, “Wait a minute. The city phone system must be entirely self-contained—how did I even call you?”

“Phone calls that are meant for me, get to me. For the same reason that I rarely get where I’m going, but always end up where I need to be.” The Doctor dismissed the issue. “The important point, though, is that someone took you, and a city worth of other humans, out to an artificial environment in the Coalsack Nebula. They tampered with your mind and your memory. And they did it, apparently, just to populate their game board.” The Doctor rose to her feet. “The Carrionites are inimical to other sapient beings. They ruled entire civilizations based around bargaining, in blood, for permission to stay alive and suffering just a little bit longer. Most of the details are lost in legend. But that doesn’t mean their enemies are our allies, especially if they get together for a friendly game of chess over human lives.”

“They do say,” Stella said, “that you should never get in the way of the police. Even stepping in front of them is bad, they say.”

“Who says?”

“Er, Keith Brenner, mostly. He’s one of the voice actors at the radio station, where I work, and he likes to think that he’s fighting the man. Maybe he’s not as crazy as I thought.”

The Doctor stepped forward suddenly. “You work at a radio station?”

“Er, yeah. I do sound effects for radio dramas. I . . . don’t remember when I learned how, I guess it’s probably implanted information . . .”

“What do you think would happen,” the Doctor said, “if all the humans realized they’d been lied to?”


	4. Chapter 4

_They can’t play their game if we tip the board,_ the Doctor had said.

To take over the radio station, all they needed was a small emergency during prime listening time—the evening news hour, in other words. Stella got the Doctor and Kishallon past the security guards by claiming they were friends she was showing around. Nobody batted an eye. Stella should have been tense to the point of trembling, but she wasn’t— having to deal with Carrionites and TARDISes had left her emotional muscles worn out, apparently. Stella said hello to the elevator operator, Rupert, and went up to the studio. “What sort of small emergency?” Stella whispered to the Doctor after they were out of the elevator.

The Doctor took out a slim silver instrument and pointed it at the upper wall. The tip glowed blue, and the thing made a peeping noise—which was abruptly drowned out by the clangor of the fire alarm, at full volume. “Your nineteen thirties building,” the Doctor said, over the noise, “obeys twenty-first century fire codes.”

They passed by the news crew, headed toward the stairs. One of the anchors, Ron Mercer, blocked their way. “Where are you going? This is a fire drill!”

“I’ll be down in just a minute,” Stella improvised frantically. “I just want to show my friends—“

“It’s not even _your_ turn in the studio.” The _your_ was laden with contempt; Ron was one of the people who didn’t like Stella. Now, with steady hormones, she could somewhat pass, but when she was first hired, she couldn’t—and the more she changed, the more hostile some people got, as if she were deliberately defrauding them by looking the way she wanted to. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” Ron went on, “but—“

“Just a moment.” The Doctor stepped in front of Ron. “I know your voice, don’t I?”

“I’m Ron Mercer,” said Ron, puffing his chest out a bit. “I’m the best investigative reporter the station has. You may recall some of my stories, such as the exposé on the Banshee hoax . . .”

The Doctor twitched her head, indicating that Stella and Kishallon should get moving. “Of course I do. Of course I do. Ron, I represent a group of citizens interested in rewarding journalistic excellence . . .”

Stella and Kishallon rushed to the studio. “Lauded Centra,” Kishallon said, looking around.

“Yeah, it’s primitive,” Stella said.

“No, it’s magnificent! You don’t have any struct dust, or satellites, or anything, but you’ve put together a radio broadcasting mechanism!”

_“I_ didn’t,” Stella said, and put her notebook down on the newscaster’s desk. “I’m going to put us on air, now, so anything you say will be broadcast. Just start reading what I’ve written in the notebook when I give you the thumbs up . . .”

The fire alarm cut off.

Stella had fleshed out her notes into a full-fledged essay, or at least a set of coherent bullet points. All the things that were wrong with the city. The Doctor and Kishallon had helped her brainstorm them—the Doctor more than Kishallon, because Kishallon had alternated between things that Stella didn’t recognize— _no genetic interlocutors_ —to things that were centuries out of date, like _no armed battlements._ Still, Kishallon had come up with some salient points. _Where’s the food coming from? There’s no molecular replication yet; it would all have to be grown in fields. Where are they? In fact, are there any roads out of the city?_

Stella thought she might be developing a mild crush on Kishallon. She was a bit meek, and always deferred to the Doctor, but she had thrown herself into the development of the radio broadcast and nervously volunteered to be the one speaking while Stella managed the microphones and all the rest. In other words, she was brave and competent enough to handle both bat-things and public speaking. Also, of course, she was gorgeous.

Stella gave Kishallon the thumbs up, and Kishallon started reading.

_We have been lied to, brainwashed, and kidnapped._ That was the central idea. All the other points served that message. _We are not going to be passive any longer. We are owed answers._

Stella had left out the Doctor’s revelation that the city was in outer space. She couldn’t prove that one. She could prove, by everyone’s experiences, that the city should have a name, that it should exist in a state or a country, that there should be dates on the newspapers, that there should be brand names—that was one the Doctor had noticed. Cinemas called “cinema,” hotels labeled “hotel.”

_Think back. How did you get here? Why did you decide to move here? Is the memory clear, or foggy?_

If Stella could be woken up by a playing card suggesting that things were odd, then the radio broadcast should smash through the brainwashing like a wrecking ball.

_Why is the weather different, block by block?_

_Why do the blocks change?_

_Why—_

The Doctor opened the door. “Cut the broadcast,” she said, “the police—“

A policeman came in the door behind her and made a gesture. Stella’s panel went dead. So did Kishallon’s mike.

The Doctor stepped in front of him, very deliberately. He regarded her without emotion.

“Take us,” the Doctor said, “to the lead Eternal.”

§

The police took them to the Clocktower.

“Doctor,” Stella murmured, in the back of the police car, “what are Eternals?”

“Empty soap bubbles drifting in the wastes of eternity.”

“Yeah, that’s very poetic, but what does it _mean?”_

“It means that they’re creatures of Eternity, but there’s not much _to_ them. Vast cosmic power and a handful of scraps of thought. It’s rare for them even to come up with something as staggeringly unoriginal as sadism. Why are we whispering?”

Stella cocked her head toward the driver.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the Doctor said, in a normal voice. “He can read your mind.”

“Oh.” Stella frantically thought, _two times two is four. Two times four is eight. Two times eight . . ._

As they went through one block, detouring around a riot, the block turned into a scrambled jumbling of architecture, and the streetlights went white. The Doctor grinned fiercely, but didn’t say anything.

Up the steps of the Clocktower, up an antique cage elevator—far up—and into a huge room. The clock face was visible, reversed, on the inside of each wall, and it was at least thirty feet across. There didn’t seem to be any mechanism. There was a glowing amber teardrop of a gemstone, floating unsupported about forty feet from the floor. It looked easily the size of a person.

There were two thrones, one on either side of the room. In one, there was a dark-skinned man in orange robes and an ornate sun headdress. In the other, a regal, pale woman in a shimmering black dress, with an equally extravagant headdress of her own. Neither headdress looked like something a human could wear for long without neck strain.

Neither of them looked at the new visitors. Neither of them moved. Stella wondered if she was beginning to understand what the Doctor had meant, about Eternals being soap bubbles. Normally, you would expect a headdress like that to confer a sense of presence, but Stella felt like she could turn her back on the figure in the orange robes and forget he was there. The Carrionite seemed somewhat more real, but not as real as a human somehow.

The Doctor waited a moment, and then, in a tone of patience being tested by fools, said, “Well? Get her a chair.”

_Now_ both of them turned their heads, in unison, slowly. Stella wanted to bolt. From the way Kishallon’s hand suddenly found hers, it was mutual.

“This,” the man in orange robes said, in rolling bass tones, “is the Tower of Eternity, the center of the great game between Eternals and Carrionites.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “got that, thanks. You two represent the heads of each faction, and are presumably here to keep order. Well, Stella Jeong, here, represents the _third_ faction: homo sapiens. And I can’t help but notice she doesn’t have a fancy chair.”

“You can’t do this to me,” Stella hissed.

“The game is what they understand. The game is how we have to reach them.”

“The Ephemerals,” the Eternal in armor intoned, “are not a faction in the game.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “they are, because I saw a square turn human as we went by.”

“The Ephemerals are tiny creatures. There is no comparison between Ephemerals and Eternals.”

“There is no comparison,” the Carrionite added, “between meat and Carrionites.”

“They do not even realize that they exist in a game.”

“And yet,” the Doctor said, “they’re playing it. _Chair.”_

There was a pause, and then an ornamented chair appeared on the third side of the room, opposite the elevator. It had faces all over it. Stella decided that she preferred it to the Carrionite chair—bird skulls—but not to the the Eternal chair, which was covered with abstract geometric shapes. All that was secondary to—“You can’t make me represent the _human race!”_

“Who would you choose to do it?” the Doctor asked.

“I—but—“ Most of the people Stella could think of, she wouldn’t trust with her welfare, but she was sure that she wasn’t up to it either. “What are the rules? What are the _stakes?”_

“The winner,” the Eternal leader said, “may crave a boon of the Eternals. I believe the Carrionites intend to ask for power over time and space.”

“And if the Eternals win?” the Doctor asked.

“The Carrionites have eaten civilizations that could have lent flavor to our games. If we win, they will confine themselves to the system where they first emerged.”

“What about the humans?” Stella said. “What happens to them if one of you two win?”

“They will be returned to the times and places from whence they came.”

“Even if the Carrionites win?” Stella asked, skeptical.

“After the City is rendered Carrionite,” the Carrionite said, “you will be ready to be our vanguard. You will teach the others of your species the ways of blood and fear. You will lead the cults that serve us. You will wield the blade, the flame, and the flenser for our sacrifices. You will have learned that for you to survive, others must writhe.”

“I see,” Stella said, forcing her voice to calm with difficulty.

“If the Eternals win,” the Doctor asked, “will you restore the humans who have been destroyed or mutilated by the game?”

“Why should we? Ephemerals end. It is part of your nature.”

Stella nodded. “Tell you what, then,” she said. “Promise to fix all the humans who have been hurt during the game, and the human side will help the Eternals.”

The Carrionite leaned forward for the first time. “That is unfair! You must annihilate her faction for rule-breaking.”

“It is,” the Eternal said slowly, “technically, not against the rules. Besides, the game cannot be played without Ephemerals present. It is _their_ perception which determines the ownership of a square. If they perceive it to be a place of crime and chaos, it becomes Carrionite. If law and order prevail in their eyes, it is Eternal. If—”

The jewel hanging in the air turned white. The Eternal and the Carrionite looked up, suddenly, as if startled.

“If the humans perceive the square as belonging to humanity,” the Doctor said softly, triumphantly, “it goes to the human side.” She smiled, a ferocious, wolfish smile. “Checkmate.”

“I refuse!” The Carrionite woman flew at Stella—literally _flew_ at her, robes barely skimming the floor and hands outstretched into claws. “Humans are meat, not players! If you will not crush this mockery of the game—“ She had reached Stella—Stella barely had time to back away, and found her shoulderblades hitting the elevator while Kishallon frantically tried to pull the Carrionite off and the Doctor tried a karate-like chop to the neck—only for both of them to find out that their hands went straight through the Carrionite. _“Then I will!”_ the Carrionite finished triumphantly, and stabbed her hand at Stella’s chest.

The hand went through with no resistance, and then Stella felt a horrible tearing feeling inside her. Chest pain, intense as she’d ever felt—she couldn’t breathe, everything was on fire, she could _feel death coming—_

The Carrionite was brandishing a lump of something red and wet, and the Doctor was yelling too. Stella’s vision was going red and black, but she saw the Doctor holding up a playing card—the two of hearts, unmarked and unsigned—as if she were going to rip it in two. _“I will bring the forces of paradox down upon both your heads—“_ And then the Eternal started speaking. Rolling bass words that Stella couldn’t understand, couldn’t parse, because the light was going out—

§

To her surprise, Stella woke up.

“Easy,” the Doctor said instantly, right above her.

Stella struggled to sit up anyway. She felt shaky and cold. Her chest didn’t hurt, and that seemed almost a transgression after the pain she had felt earlier. “I was _dead,”_ she said.

“For a moment,” the Doctor agreed. “The Eternal restored you.”

“They can do that?”

“They can do almost anything— _if_ they think of it.”

Stella looked around the room. The jewel was still hanging in the middle of it, white, and the Eternal was still on his throne, but the Carrionite throne was blasted and blackened. “What happened to the Carrionite?”

“All the Carrionites are gone.”

“What?”

“It seems that killing you was cheating,” the Doctor said. “The Eternals take cheating seriously. All Carrionites, everywhere, have been banished to the Outer Darkness.”

“All of them for what one did?”

“It seems so.”

“Okay,” Stella said, “the next time you put me in charge of a game with stakes like that, _without knowing the rules,_ I am actually, no joke, going to strangle you. Like, really. With my hands and your neck. I could have ruined _everything!”_

“If you had,” the Doctor said, “I wouldn’t have given you my card. Get up, Stella. It’s time to redeem your boon from the Eternals.”

Stella got to her feet. “How likely are the Eternals to twist everything I say?”

“Not very likely. Malevolent wish-genie games require a certain level of creativity, and the Eternals don’t have any. They’re fundamentally empty.”

“Okay,” Stella said. “Sir? Game master, whatever your proper title is?”

“Eternal,” said the Eternal, “will suffice.”

“All right. Eternal. I want all the humans who were taken to be restored to the same state of body and mind that they had when they were brought here. I want them transported back to the times and places they left, or, if they were in mortal danger, to the nearest safe spot. Any humans who were born in the city during this period should be placed safely with one of their parents, provided that parent will look after them; if neither parent wants them, I want them transported safely to a hospital. I want you to comply with the spirit of my instructions, not just the letter. That’s my boon.”

“Understood,” the Eternal said.

Stella waited a moment, and then said, “When will it begin? Do the humans have to go wait somewhere?”

“It is already done.”

“What? But—then—what about me?”

“You referred to the humans as ‘them.’ Looking into your mind, to make sure the spirit of the instructions was complied with, it is clear that you see yourself as alienated from the rest of humanity. Thus, you were not included in the boon.”

“Fortunately,” the Doctor said, putting a hand on Stella’s shoulder, “you have a ride home with us. Come on, Stella, Kishallon. Let’s get back to the TARDIS.”

“If you wish to preserve your Ephemeral forms, you should hurry,” the Eternal said tranquilly. “The game board will be dismantled soon. The lights are going out.”

He vanished. Like, Stella thought, a soap bubble.

§

The streetlights did go out when they were almost to the TARDIS. Then the car’s headlights, causing Stella to bring the car to a screeching but mostly-controlled stop. The Doctor took out the instrument she had used to trigger the fire alarm, and held it up. The tip glowed blue—not very much, but the only light in sudden and absolute darkness.

They had, Stella realized belatedly, turned out the moon and stars, too.

“That’s awfully useful,” Stella said, indicating the tool. “What is it?”

“Sonic screwdriver.”

As a magician, Stella was hyperaware of bafflegab, and that particular description sounded like nonsense to her. Still, she didn’t know how you could make things bigger on the inside, so maybe her bafflegab detector wasn’t going to be much use here.

Even with the light, they almost bumped into the TARDIS.

“You know,” the Doctor said, when they were all inside, “‘a ride home’ is one of those flexible phrases you were worried about for wishes. Depending.”

Stella tensed. “Depending on what?”

“Whether you want it to be. Visit a piece of history that fascinates you? Round the Horsehead Nebula, back in time for tea? Stay for however long you like, and come back to the day you left—or any other day that takes your fancy.”

“You’re asking me to take a road trip with you,” Stella said.

A quick flashing smile. “‘Where we’re going,’” the Doctor quoted, “‘we won’t need roads.’”

“Why?”

The Doctor waved her hands, indicating the room around them. The sky outside the console room was dark, right now, and star-spangled, and a moon was rising—a better imitation of the Earth’s moon, Stella noted, than the Eternals had bothered with. “I have the best ship in the universe. I can do whatever I want. And besides, you risked your life trying to drag my friend away from an angry Carrionite. Why _wouldn’t_ I want you along?”

“Well—because I—“ Because, Stella realized, she was more used to being tolerated than being liked. “I’d like to—as long as I don’t slow you down. If it starts being a problem, I’ll move on. No questions asked.”

“Likewise,” the Doctor said. “Of course, there is one place we have to go first.”

“Where’s that?”

“Vegas. Las Vegas, the normal one. Two thousand eighteen.” The Doctor held up a two of hearts, an unmarked one, between two fingers. “I have to deliver my card.”

“To _me,”_ Stella realized abruptly. “You didn’t know me because you hadn’t done it yet. Isn’t that some sort of a paradox?” Hadn’t the Doctor threatened the Eternal with a paradox, back when Stella was dying?

No, Stella realized, thinking back, she had threatened the Eternals with breaking _this very loop_ —ripping the card, never delivering it to Stella. That was where the fingernail mark on the card had come from. The Doctor’s—bluff? Possibly not. Stella didn’t know the Doctor well enough to know when she was bluffing.

“Humans,” the Doctor said, “call a lot of things paradoxes. Some of them are dangerous, some of them are deadly, and some of them are safe enough you can use them in certain kinds of computers. A bootstrap paradox is one of the latter. Now.” She took out a full pack of cards. “I’m going to have to exchange your cards for mine, at some point. That card is made of twenty-fifth century pseudoplastic—looks like paper, feels like paper, but it can be acted upon by the sonic screwdriver.” She took the sonic screwdriver out, and made the two of hearts fly in a figure eight above it. “Unlike actual card stock, which contains wood pulp. That should be simple enough; just distract you while you’re setting up. Kishallon, I’ll need your help with that.” Kishallon nodded. “Beyond that—“ She smiled, a grin of pure enthusiasm. “Tell me, do I get to dress up as a tourist?”


End file.
